As I have been working through the opening chapters of Acts in sermon preparation, one of the things that has become increasingly clear is that the events Luke records do not appear in isolation from the covenantal framework of the Old Testament. The promises are already there, as are the categories through which those promises are fulfilled. What changes with the coming of Christ is not the abandonment of that covenantal pattern, but its fulfillment and transformation through his death, resurrection, and exaltation. I think this becomes particularly important when we come to Peter’s words at the conclusion of his Pentecost sermon in Acts 2:38–39.
After Peter proclaims the death and resurrection of Christ, his hearers are “pierced to the heart” and ask, “Brothers, what should we do?” Peter responds, “Repent and be baptized, each of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children, and for all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God will call” (Acts 2:38–39). These verses are familiar, particularly within discussions concerning baptism, but I think the larger covenantal pattern in which Peter’s command occurs is often overlooked. I just taught the first part of my series on covenant theology a few days prior, so covenant themes were fresh in my mind. So, when I read through Acts 2 a few days later, the covenant theological connections were so clear, as I hope to demonstrate below.
Peter does not begin by telling his hearers to be baptized. He first explains what God has accomplished in Christ. Jesus was “handed over by God’s determined plan and foreknowledge” and killed by lawless men (Acts 2:23), but God raised him from the dead (2:24), exalted him to his right hand, and from there Christ received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit, which he poured out upon his people (2:32–33). Luke has already provided the covenantal significance of Jesus’ death when, at the Last Supper, Jesus identified the cup as “the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you” (Luke 22:20). Thus, by the time we arrive at Pentecost, the New Covenant has already been established through Christ’s sacrificial death. It is only after Peter proclaims what God has accomplished in the Messiah that his hearers ask what they should do, to which Peter responds, “Repent and be baptized” (Acts 2:38). Baptism, therefore, appears within an already established covenantal context rather than as an isolated response to an individual conversion experience.
To appreciate the significance of this pattern, however, I think we need to go all the way back to Abraham. In Genesis 15, God promises Abram that he will have an offspring and that his offspring will inherit the land. Abram asks, “Lord GOD, how can I know that I will possess it?” (Gen. 15:8). God responds by instructing Abram to bring several animals, which Abram cuts in half and arranges opposite one another (15:9–10). A smoking fire pot and flaming torch then pass between the divided animals, after which we are told, “On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram” (15:18).
The imagery is significant because the Old Testament expression for making a covenant is literally to “cut” a covenant. Jeremiah 34:18–20 provides an important parallel for understanding the significance of passing between the divided animals. There, those who violated the covenant had cut a calf in two and passed between its pieces, and because they broke that covenant, God declares that they will become like the animal they had cut. The divided animals therefore symbolize the covenant curse that falls upon the covenant breaker. What is remarkable about Genesis 15 is that Abram does not pass between the pieces; God does. Whatever else we might say about the ceremony, God is placing the fulfillment of the covenant promise upon himself.
This becomes quite significant as the covenant story progresses because humanity breaks covenant, and Israel herself repeatedly comes under the covenant curses because of her unfaithfulness. Yet the covenant promises are not abandoned, nor can the covenant curse simply be ignored. It is within this larger biblical framework that Paul’s words in Galatians 3:13 become particularly important: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.” The God who passed between the divided animals in Genesis 15 ultimately provides the one who bears the covenant curse in the person of his Son. This does not mean that Genesis 15 explicitly predicts the crucifixion in all its details, but within the larger canonical development of the covenant, the connection is difficult to miss. The covenant Lord takes upon himself the curse deserved by covenant breakers.
This brings us back to Jesus’ words in Luke 22:20: “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.” His words bring the bloody covenantal pattern established with Abraham to its fulfillment. In Genesis 15, animals are cut when the covenant is made and God passes between the divided pieces. Then, in Genesis 17, the covenant sign itself involves the cutting of flesh and the shedding of blood.
In Genesis 17:7, God tells Abraham, “I will establish my covenant between me and you and your future offspring throughout their generations, as an everlasting covenant to be your God and the God of your offspring after you.” God then gives Abraham the sign of that covenant: “This is my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you, which you are to keep: Every one of your males must be circumcised” (17:10). God establishes his covenant, extends the promise to Abraham and his offspring, and then gives the covenant sign to mark out those who belong to the covenant community.
When we return to Acts 2, there is a striking continuity with that covenantal pattern. Christ has accomplished the work of the New Covenant, God has raised and exalted him, and the promised Spirit has been poured out. Peter then calls his hearers to repent and be baptized, adding, “For the promise is for you and for your children.” I am not suggesting that Peter is quoting Genesis 17:7, nor does Luke explicitly direct the reader back to Genesis 17 at this point. The connection is instead found in the continuity of the covenantal structure. In Genesis 17, the promise is given to Abraham and his offspring together with the covenant sign. In Acts 2, Christ’s covenant-making work was accomplished, the promise is announced to Peter’s hearers and their children, and baptism is administered.
This also helps explain why the change from circumcision to baptism should not be treated as an arbitrary change in religious ceremony. Circumcision was a bloody sign placed upon the flesh of the covenant member. Yet by the time we arrive at Acts 2, the sacrifice necessary to establish the New Covenant has already been offered by Christ himself. The covenant curse has fallen upon him, and his blood is the blood of the New Covenant. Covenant members no longer bear their own bloody covenant sign in their flesh because the covenant curse reached its fulfillment in Christ’s death. The New Covenant sign is therefore bloodless; the decisive sacrifice has already been made.
Paul’s language in Colossians 2:11–12 provides further reason for placing circumcision and baptism within the same redemptive-historical discussion. He tells the Colossians that they were “circumcised in him with a circumcision not done with hands” and then immediately speaks of their having been “buried with him in baptism.” Whatever conclusions one draws concerning every aspect of Paul’s argument there, circumcision and baptism are clearly brought into close theological relationship. The transition from circumcision to baptism should therefore be understood within the accomplishment of Christ rather than as though one covenant sign simply disappeared and an unrelated Christian ordinance took its place.
The Promise Is for You and Your Children
This is what makes Peter’s statement in Acts 2:39 especially significant. Peter does not announce the arrival of the New Covenant and then tell his Jewish hearers that God’s covenant dealings with his people and their children have now disappeared. Instead, immediately after commanding them to repent and be baptized, he says, “For the promise is for you and for your children.” For Jewish hearers whose Scriptures repeatedly described God’s covenant promises in relation to themselves and their offspring, this language would hardly have sounded like the announcement of an entirely new covenantal structure.
Something has certainly changed. Christ has come, the promised Spirit has been poured out, and circumcision has given way to baptism. Nevertheless, the movement from old to new is one of redemptive-historical fulfillment rather than the abandonment of the covenantal pattern itself. The sign changes precisely because the redemptive work to which the former sign pointed has advanced in Christ.
There is also a broader restoration context surrounding Peter’s words that should not be overlooked. Luke tells us that those gathered in Jerusalem at Pentecost included “Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven” (Acts 2:5). Israel had long been scattered among the nations, and now Jews from those nations are gathered in Jerusalem as the promised Spirit is poured out. Peter proclaims Israel’s crucified and risen Messiah and then announces, “The promise is for you and for your children, and for all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God will call” (2:39). Rather than presenting the New Covenant as the abandonment of Israel’s covenant story, Luke presents the events of Pentecost as its fulfillment in Christ and the beginning of its expansion outward to the nations.
This is also why I think Acts 2 can be read too individualistically when baptism is interpreted primarily as the outward expression of an individual conversion experience. Certainly, Peter commands his hearers to repent, and nothing about covenant membership removes the necessity of personal faith. But baptism appears here within a much larger redemptive and covenantal context. Peter is speaking to Jews gathered from among the nations, announcing the fulfillment of Israel’s promises in the crucified, risen, and exalted Messiah, and calling them to receive the covenant sign while declaring that the promise remains “for you and for your children.”
When we follow this pattern from Genesis into Acts, the continuity is striking. Genesis 15 establishes the covenant-cutting background in which God himself passes between the divided pieces and assumes the covenant sanctions. Genesis 17 extends the covenant promise to Abraham and his offspring and gives circumcision as the bloody sign placed upon their flesh. Christ then establishes the New Covenant through his death and bears the covenant curse upon himself. Against that background, Peter’s announcement at Pentecost is not the beginning of a covenantal structure disconnected from what came before it. The sign has changed because redemptive history has moved forward in Christ, but the covenantal pattern remains recognizable: the same covenant-keeping God who promised to be God to Abraham and his offspring now announces through his apostle, “The promise is for you and for your children.”
— Romans 11:36
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